Acer CEO resigns, Acer to tread “cautiously” with mobile devices

Acer has announced that CEO and President Gianfranco Lanci is out, after months of dialog, it apparently became clear that his priorities were different from those of the board of directors. What does this mean for Acer products moving forward? It’s not entirely clear at the moment, but there are some hints in the press release.

Acer Chairman J.T. Wang says “the personal computer remains the core of our business,” and that while Acer is “stepping into the new mobiel device market,” the company will “invest cautiously and aim to become one of the leading players.”

Investing cautiously sounds like an interesting way to become a leading player, and it makes me wonder differences in opinion over Acer’s prospects in the mobile space might have led to Lanci’s ouster. On the one hand, it seems like no PC company can afford to ignore the tablet or smartphone space. On the other hand, it’s awfully hard to differentiate your offering when pretty much every PC maker is has similar offerings. You could definitely make a case that investing ambitiously in mobile tech could end up being a huge waste of money and resources if it doesn’t pay off.

While the Apple iPad has shown that there’s a huge demand for consumer tablets, it’s not yet clear if there’s room in the market for a diverse range of tablets the way there is for a diverse range of personal computers and smartphones.

The change in leadership isn’t supposed to affect any “current operations.” It’s not yet clear if those operations include work on Acer’s upcoming line of Android and Windows tablets. But honestly, it’s not clear from the press release if Lanci was let go because he was championing mobile devices or holding Acer back in the mobile space.

Liliputing’s primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the “Shop” button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we’ll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you’re using an ad blocker and hate online shopping.

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Well, here’s what is probably the most important news item of the year, and most people will gloss over it with disinterest because the type of technology enthusiast that reads blogs like this don’t know or care about the business realities underlying the objects of their enthusiasm. It’s not worth giving away all of the secrets here, but it’s worth urging you to thinkabout. This is real bad news, folks, and it’s merely a symptom that mobile technology has taken a serious nose dive in the last two years. Acer isn’t exactly the smallest player in the world of computers, and in fact, if you look at the manifested attitude of the very big companies in consumer technology (HP, Dell, Microsoft, Acer, etc.) you’ll see that there’s a big difference between what we tech enthusiasts think people want what big businesses actually think makes sense for the market. It’s a… Read more »

Vote Up0Vote Down Reply

7 years ago

Guest

Aylo

You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.

Interesting. I bet you are right. This is basically Acer’s vote of no confidence in the direction of handheld mobile computing, a stance that all of the major players in computing seem to agree on. At the same time, one of Intel’s executives from the ultra mobile computing division left the company last week due to Intel’s failure to push into hand held computing with any real impact. Add on top of that the fact that AMD is now taking one of Freescale’s executives, and the landscape of mobile computing is very much upside down. What gets me is that very few people seem to actually want non-iPad tablets, and still some people still pretend that not getting into a market that doesn’t exist is some sort of failure.